The National VoicePath

Physicist Stephen Hawking, apparently dismissing the need for God in creation by arguing that the universe could be self-forming, is mistaken in his theory, said Terry Eagleton, one of the most influential British literary critics and Marxists, Monday. “It’s a fascinating theory. But he’s making a very simple mistake, that many atheists and even many Christians make too, to say that God is the creator means God got it all started,” Eagleton said at a press conference in Seoul, prior to his five-day lecture on the humanities in Korea. “The doctrine of creation has nothing to do with that,” he said. Hawking, famous for his black hole theory, said in his new book that the universe could have created itself “from nothing” and it was not necessary to “invoke God” to set the universe going. Eagleton made a reference to Christian theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas who had said that it was perfectly possible that the universe had no origin. “Aquinas believed in creation but ...

Can scientific laws produce 'spontaneous creation'? SIR – Stephen Hawking makes a category error in his dismissal of God (Comment, September 3). He will find no God if he looks for God as an object among objects. We humans live with the mystery of being not only objects (under the laws of nature) but subjects with consciousness and the freedom of rational beings. We look at the universe through the window of our rationality, just as we might look at a garden through a window. We forget the window but it is always there. Our selfhood is free and transcendent. Professor Hawking and the scientists rightly explore questions about the physical universe and its chains of contingency and objective causation. What they will not answer is the "why" of the universe. Why is it here? This is not a scientific question – it is not another part of the chain of cause and effect that science is unravelling with such brilliance. Questions about...